The design team behind the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic emblems drew inspiration from an unlikely source: a pink cockatoo. Speaking to Brisbane Times, Landor creative director Andy Thomas described the moment the team realised the bird's raised crest looked like a flame. "We looked at everything under the sun, including the sun," Thomas said. "We had a list of hundreds of different things that the emblem could be ... we could see something there, so we put a note against the cockatoo and kept coming back to it."
The process was sparked by a Guardian article about Queensland's palm cockatoo, but it was a photograph from National Geographic's Joel Sartore that sealed the decision. "When we first saw the image of the pink cockatoo's crest set against the black background, you can't help but notice a flame," Thomas said. The team faced a challenge: the cockatoo had a strong personality, so further refinement was needed.
At the design team's South Bank headquarters, walls are lined with different iterations of the cockatoo logo, some facing left with distinctive beaks. Thomas noted that when the cockatoo faces the other way, "it resembles the shape of Queensland." The emblem thus serves as both a dynamic symbol of fire and a subtle outline of the host state.